Recently Seen in 2019

[Deadrody]

Just saw ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

Remy Malik was terrible, beyond awful as Freddie Mercury. Singer totally marginalized the other band members such that the movie is more ‘The Freddie Mercury Story’ than a biopic of the band. I don’t know how he won a Golden Globe for that performance.

And an Oscar. His acceptance speech might give you a hint.

 

[Deadrody]

Just watched Green Book today with my wife. Nice win for them in a couple categories, including the one that matters most. They may have accidentally gotten one right for a change.

 

[zymurg]

Just watched "Nowhere in Africa" ,the 2002 Oscar winner for best foreign film. The director, Caroline Link, is not someone I'm familiar with. My interest was aroused by a Roger Ebert review. A family of Jews flees Germany and lands in Kenya. the film covers the years from 1938 to 1947. It is in German and is subtitled.
This is an excellent family drama. Great acting and beautifully shot in Kenya. Definitely worth a view.

 

[ZooCougar]

I really enjoyed Alita: Battle Angel. Story/characters were interesting enough, good world building and special effects/cinematography. Critics hated it, audiences seem to like it but it didn't do very well at the box office opening weekend. There's more story to tell but I don't think it'll make enough money to get a sequel unfortunately.

read a review of the movie that had low expectations and praised it. The review said that characters giant eyes really detracted from the overall film.

I will probably watch this one before ever viewing Mortal Engines.

 

[nwhoopfan]

The review said that characters giant eyes really detracted from the overall film.

That didn't bother me. They were just paying tribute to the manga character this was based on, that's part of the visual style.

 

[Dove]

Watched Free Solo this weekend. Man, even knowing what happens, that movie had my stomach in knots the last 20 minutes. Really liked the movie. Great documentary.

Free Solo won the Oscar for Best Documentary and will be premiering on Nat Geo Sunday Night at 9!!

 

[dbmill]

Just watched "American Splendor", a 2003 biography about Harvey Pekar, an underground comic book artist and curmudgeon who lived in Cleveland. It's a wonderfully imaginative film starring Paul Giamatti about a man who is the living definition of a misanthrope, who chronicles his life through various comic books. Giamatti is terrific, and the film also features scenes with the real life Pekar and his various friends talking about the film in progress and whatever else crosses their minds. I quite enjoyed it.

 

[ZooCougar]

“The First Man”

The flight and space scenes in this movie are without peer. The first scene is one of the best in the movie. This would have been a good movie to see in the theater or in IMAX.

Ryan Gosling plays the usual Ryan Gosling character. Aloof, Laconic and Stoic. It actually works given Neil Armstrong as the subject matter. I had no idea Buzz Aldrin was such a jerk.

I just don’t know what else to say about this movie. I feel like it should have been great but it missed on something. Maybe as if it is less than the sum of all of it’s parts.

It’s still pretty good, but not great. I would definitely recommend.

 

[Palatine]

“The First Man”

The flight and space scenes in this movie are without peer. The first scene is one of the best in the movie. This would have been a good movie to see in the theater or in IMAX.

Ryan Gosling plays the usual Ryan Gosling character. Aloof, Laconic and Stoic. It actually works given Neil Armstrong as the subject matter. I had no idea Buzz Aldrin was such a jerk.

I just don’t know what else to say about this movie. I feel like it should have been great but it missed on something. Maybe as if it is less than the sum of all of it’s parts.

It’s still pretty good, but not great. I would definitely recommend.

The problem with the film is that Armstrong was not an interesting person. He was your basic engineer.

 

[Mano]

Been a while...

Super Troopers 2: Hard to live up to the cult classic original, but it was still good for a few laughs. Probably would be even better in an altered state.

The Grinch: For the kids! It was unoffending and blah in most every way. I'll always be a sucker for animation, even when the treatment is uninspiring.

Down a Dark Hall: It was on HBO so I just let it run in the background mostly. Meh.

Special Rewatch Edition - Almost Famous: I hadn't seen this in forever. Forgot how fun and breezy a good time it was. Especially the flight scene towards the end. Love when you let a large span of time go in between watching a really good movie, especially for me with how terrible my memory can be, it's like watching it again for the first time. Only real quibble, the horrible continuity error in the bedroom scene at the very end, oh what a painful gaffe in such an important scene. I try not to let such things undermine the proceedings but they always seem to worm their way in. Still, great movie.

 

[ZooCougar]

The Oath - Yeesh. Needed more funny. Walked a really fine line between satire and a dark edge that it was trying to use to kinda be a message movie. Plays on your worst fears of what could really happen in this country, and sadly it’s major plot points aren’t all that far fetched in this day and age’s political climate.

Tomb Raider - Of the many videogame characters that are ripe for a movie treatment TR ought to have been probably the easiest to make into a compelling film. They’ve now failed three times on this property alone. I have no hope they’ll get Metal Gear Solid or Uncharted right either.

I don’t know how I feel about this...


‘Metal Gear Solid’ Director Says He’s Open to Oscar Isaac Playing Snake

 

[Mano]

I don’t know how I feel about this...


‘Metal Gear Solid’ Director Says He’s Open to Oscar Isaac Playing Snake

The director has proven to be capable enough with action films, hopefully he can improve a little in that regard. I thought his Kong flick was only ok, but still pretty watchable. He certainly seems to feel strongly about the MGS property.

I like very much the idea about Oscar Isaac but I guess they would make Solid Snake a little younger, most likely an origin story.

I get a bad feeling though that they’ll feel the need to make some of the characters more “hollywood”. Revolver Ocelot, Psycho Mantis, Liquid Snake, Big Boss, etc. can’t imagine them using some of the screwier names Kojima came up with.

 

[ZooCougar]

The director has proven to be capable enough with action films, hopefully he can improve a little in that regard. I thought his Kong flick was only ok, but still pretty watchable. He certainly seems to feel strongly about the MGS property.

I like very much the idea about Oscar Isaac but I guess they would make Solid Snake a little younger, most likely an origin story.

I get a bad feeling though that they’ll feel the need to make some of the characters more “hollywood”. Revolver Ocelot, Psycho Mantis, Liquid Snake, Big Boss, etc. can’t imagine them using some of the screwier names Kojima came up with.

They have to nail Ocelot or the movie is a failure. That character is cooler than Snake.

MGS should be a fun movie. It should be like Mission Impossible meets Marvel with some lowbrow humor infused.

Honestly, instead of movie I wish they would remake MGS for PS4. Maybe the best game ever?

 

[Mano]

They have to nail Ocelot or the movie is a failure. That character is cooler than Snake.

MGS should be a fun movie. It should be like Mission Impossible meets Marvel with some lowbrow humor infused.

Honestly, instead of movie I wish they would remake MGS for PS4. Maybe the best game ever?

Total masterpiece. Would easily make my top 5, probably top 3. Would be a fun thread, but I don’t think we’d get many people to contribute lol. That generation was my favorite PS1, Saturn, N64

 

[ZooCougar]

Total masterpiece. Would easily make my top 5, probably top 3. Would be a fun thread, but I don’t think we’d get many people to contribute lol. That generation was my favorite PS1, Saturn, N64

Having Psycho Mantis take over your controller was genius. We need a thread for it lol.

 

[ZooCougar]

Aquaman-Really cheesy and implausible. But the movie is like a Heavy Metal album cover come to life and somehow it works.

Black Manta will make an interesting villain in the future. And Randall Park offers some potent potential too.

DC could actually be not crappy if they stick with individual character movies. These characters and actors are strong enough to go solo. Man of Steel, WW, and Aquaman were all better than Batman versus Superman and Justice League.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Creed II was of course fairly formulaic, but decent. Michael B. Jordan is compelling, Stallone has found more range as he's aged, other supporting actors did fine. I don't think it's a spoiler at this point to mention that Ivan Drago and his son are at the center of this movie. Their character development wasn't nearly as much as Adonis and Rocky, but they were given a bit of an arc as well.

I wanted to like Vox Lux. I have no idea what to think about it after having seen it. I'm not sure what they were trying to do with it. Kinda aimless. It was just interesting enough to stick with it, but there wasn't much of a payoff. I like Natalie Portman, but her character was fairly awful. The real star was Raffey Cassidy, who played the 14 year old version of Portman for about the first 45 minutes of the film and as soon as it jumped forward to current time frame she had a dual role as Portman's daughter.

 

[Mano]

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - Just hollow spectacle with predictable plot beats. I'm sure we'll see at least a couple more.

The Shape of Water - Finally watched this one. It was merely ok. Had some charming performances and Shannon always makes a fine villain. In this story about love, the relationship at its center just seemed a little ludicrous.

Ralph Breaks the Internet - Hard to compete with the first one. Great animation, it was fun how they visualized the internet, certainly couldn't have been easy. The climax was pretty well done.

 

[8893]

The Shape of Water - Finally watched this one. It was merely ok. Had some charming performances and Shannon always makes a fine villain. In this story about love, the relationship at its center just seemed a little ludicrous.

Agreed. I thought her acting was excellent and I am all for suspension of disbelief in fantasy movies, but the thing I found most ludicrous was that she would be able to sneak in undetected for her music and feeding rendezvous with him in a place that was supposed to be top secret and high security.

 

[Husky25]

Ralph Breaks the Internet - Hard to compete with the first one. Great animation, it was fun how they visualized the internet, certainly couldn't have been easy. The climax was pretty well done.

I really did not like the "Virus" visual. It was beyond creepy.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Saw Hell or High Water. Decent movie, I don't get the Best Picture nomination. Also, how many times is Jeff Bridges going to get nominated for playing Jeff Bridges? If anyone deserved a nomination out of this movie, it was Ben Foster.

I am generally in the "less is more" camp when it comes to acting, but Chris Pine is barely awake in some of the scenes, which seems to happen in a lot of his movies.

That said, the acting was not my issue with this movie. My issue was that I felt like I had seen this film several times before. There was nothing particularly original about the movie.

 

[intlzncster]

Saw Hell or High Water. Decent movie, I don't get the Best Picture nomination. Also, how many times is Jeff Bridges going to get nominated for playing Jeff Bridges? If anyone deserved a nomination out of this movie, it was Ben Foster.

Highly underrated actor. Not many guys play 'crazy' better than Ben Foster.

 

[ZooCougar]

Highly underrated actor. Not many guys play 'crazy' better than Ben Foster.

Most underrated actor on the planet.

 

[ZooCougar]

Saw Hell or High Water. Decent movie, I don't get the Best Picture nomination. Also, how many times is Jeff Bridges going to get nominated for playing Jeff Bridges? If anyone deserved a nomination out of this movie, it was Ben Foster.

I am generally in the "less is more" camp when it comes to acting, but Chris Pine is barely awake in some of the scenes, which seems to happen in a lot of his movies.

That said, the acting was not my issue with this movie. My issue was that I felt like I had seen this film several times before. There was nothing particularly original about the movie.

He’s gotten a bunch of mileage off of that Crazy Heart persona.

 

[storrsroars]

“The First Man”

The flight and space scenes in this movie are without peer. The first scene is one of the best in the movie. This would have been a good movie to see in the theater or in IMAX.

Ryan Gosling plays the usual Ryan Gosling character. Aloof, Laconic and Stoic. It actually works given Neil Armstrong as the subject matter. I had no idea Buzz Aldrin was such a jerk.

I just don’t know what else to say about this movie. I feel like it should have been great but it missed on something. Maybe as if it is less than the sum of all of it’s parts.

It’s still pretty good, but not great. I would definitely recommend.

Agreed that it's missing something - and I believe the thing it's missing is entertainment. It's basically a straight storytelling of something we mostly know all about. For me, what held my interest for awhile was the telling of the Mercury and Gemini programs and all that went wrong, along with what they learned. From there it was pretty much anticlimactic as well all know how it ended. It's a good watch if one is really into the science and details of the missions. Not so much for character and plot.